Xref: utzoo comp.misc:1864 comp.sys.ibm.pc:11551
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!bnfb
From: bnfb@june.cs.washington.edu (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: IBM chose INTEL (was The New Chips)
Keywords: Intel IBM
Message-ID: <4186@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 8 Feb 88 17:24:28 GMT
References: <4746@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <4227@utai.UUCP> <1029@edge.UUCP> <161@spked.UUCP> <366@splut.UUCP>
Reply-To: bnfb@uw-june.UUCP (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 11

Here's the way I heard it, from the mouth of Mr. X himself...

IBM was designing a PC.  It had to have floating point support in a
chip.  They were using an Intel FP chip and a Z80.  They couldn't
get it to work.  They called Intel.  Intel sent down Mr. X, a tech
support salestype, to help them.  He said, "why not use an 8086?
Look how it matches our FP chip so nicely." They said, "we must have
only 8 bits."  He erased eight data lines and said "oh! you want the
8088".  And it was done...

Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson